when I leave please do not follow
you may not know it when I go
but it will be the best to feel
I’m not here, I wasn’t real
I am the things that shine at dawn
I am my shadow in your lawn
I am the way the tree will grow
I am the way your friends will go
I am the way the town will breathe
I’ll stay with you, I won’t leave
I’ll drag you down, I’ll remind
that even now you are still mine
forget me then and let me die
I know it’s best for you and I

I am
I am given birth to
I sleep for seven years
I molt
I awaken
I breed for a single night,
It hurts
I have no mouthparts
I cannot eat
But it feels good
It feels very good
I am beautiful
I find love
I will give birth tonight
I give birth
Then everything closes up
My energy’s run out
I stop flying
But that’s ok
Let this vessel
Shut down
It’s long overdue
But that was
A fun night
Was it not?

I saw a thrush in the gallery
I don’t think it belonged there
It was haphazard and wrong
Although framed
And people addressed it in third person
While all it could do was
not flap

Well I thought it was beautiful

And reminded wistfully of sewn together promises
bandaged with more thread than cloth
It’s inevitable they will decay
It’s nature’s way

The way the thrush was nailed to that
piece of marble in the ostentatious
collection of other half-wit
dead things soaked
in the nighty marble
Frozen in time, limp
Placid like an
amber crystal like an
18th century lollipop
Like a dead grandpa
in an open-casket funeral
home in middle America

I saw a deer spine in the woods with
an intact head
She smiled at me
From the neck down
She was was picked clean; I was
reminded by mother:
Don’t worry, as I went to sleep
It’s nature’s way
The light was off but I stayed awake

I counted the stars and tried
to match them up with
all of the dead pets and people
in my life and they
matched
It was just about right

People leer at the dead thrush
Expecting it to do something
All it is is just is

People leer at the heart and
expect it to do something
All it is is just
Holding my bones together
Holding the wall together
Like a loop in the knit
Frick archives
Like a syllable
In the Tanakh
Like a stone
In a stream
Like a star
In the sky
It’s nature’s way.

I swirl and swell around
I should be doing work right about now
For my college course
"film colour", something
Google doesn't cough up
Paper crowds with conversation
Faces emerge after a very
Long hiatus
I am proud albeit
Self concious that in a week
I will return and see this
Curiously expressive crowd, I'll get perplexed
"What the hell was I thinking?" and
Retreat.

You're a bird
With a string
To me you
Sew the sky
together
With more
string than
stars
in the early
dawn
Unknowingly
When things
die
You put the
sun away
And became the moon

You asked me for a secret. I couldn't think of one at the moment. A week past. Kept thinking about you. Kept thinking about you. Then I suddenly had the secret, you wanted to know, come into my mind. I wrote it down. The secret you want to know. I don't know if I should read it to you or let you read it yourself. I don't know what to do. Should I even mention it to you or should I not tell you at all. I have to see what I'm going to do when I see you again. If you or I even mention the word, "Secret"; I am going to tell you my secret.